A Masculine God...?
We have got accustomed to thinking about God as an Individual and as masculine, as “he.” The mothering dimension is usually neglected. “Mothering” is a word that conveys the sense of being nurtured in the most elemental ways. Doesn’t God desire intimacy with us? Hasn’t he said, “Even if a woman forgets the child of her womb, I shall not forget you?” And in another place he says, “I took Israel like a child into my arms and pressed his cheek to mine.” Didn’t Jesus once say, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I have longed to take you to myself as a mother hen takes her chicks under her wings.” Clearly, these are feminine portraits.
To the little boy the woman’s world feels like the soft, moist, timeless world of the body, the world of holding and caring, and of the imagination. On the other hand, the man’s world feels like distance, performance demands, and machines. Men who have not had the experience of a deeply nurturing father carry something of the “wounded father” within them. It is the image of the father as distant, wounded or angry. That wounded father needs healing. Men have been inclined by their male experience to believe that separation, independence, standing on one’s feet, efficiency and hard decisions are characteristic of men. This mentality was projected on to God by a male-constructed theology. So God was perceived as autonomous, unrelated, transcendent, totally other, taking tough decisions. The patriarchal system entered into our catechisms. Male theologians enjoyed and defended ecclesiastical male power monopolies. God was imagined as male, and that meant power, control, and the demand for obedience. But now-a-days we are hungering for a fuller experience of God than this. Perhaps we sense that such a God is a “wounded father” we carry inside us; an image of God distant, cold, controlling, and unavailable. On page 263 of his latest book, “Jesus of Nazareth” Vol. II, Pope Benedict writes, “The Church’s juridical structure is founded on Peter and the Eleven, but in the day-to-day life of the Church it is the women who are constantly opening the door to the Lord and accompanying him to the Cross, and so it is they who come to experience the Risen One.”
However, we must not succumb to the romantic notion that God decided to create the universe with other persons in it because God was lonely. Rather, it is as though the three Persons say to one another: “Our community life is so good, why don’t we create other persons and invite them into this life?” God does not create out of need, but out of love. To give up God as “Father” is to surrender male privilege. To embrace the “feminine” in God is to embrace the promise of that deep nurturing presence and indwelling that we so need, the warmth that a mother’s caress can give. In the same book Pope Benedict speaks about the import of the feminine: “...in the narrative tradition (of the Resurrection) women play a key role, indeed they take precedence over the men.” “...they communicate the whole breadth of the Resurrection experience...the first encounter with the Risen Lord was destined to be for them (women).” (pp. 262-263).
To the little boy the woman’s world feels like the soft, moist, timeless world of the body, the world of holding and caring, and of the imagination. On the other hand, the man’s world feels like distance, performance demands, and machines. Men who have not had the experience of a deeply nurturing father carry something of the “wounded father” within them. It is the image of the father as distant, wounded or angry. That wounded father needs healing. Men have been inclined by their male experience to believe that separation, independence, standing on one’s feet, efficiency and hard decisions are characteristic of men. This mentality was projected on to God by a male-constructed theology. So God was perceived as autonomous, unrelated, transcendent, totally other, taking tough decisions. The patriarchal system entered into our catechisms. Male theologians enjoyed and defended ecclesiastical male power monopolies. God was imagined as male, and that meant power, control, and the demand for obedience. But now-a-days we are hungering for a fuller experience of God than this. Perhaps we sense that such a God is a “wounded father” we carry inside us; an image of God distant, cold, controlling, and unavailable. On page 263 of his latest book, “Jesus of Nazareth” Vol. II, Pope Benedict writes, “The Church’s juridical structure is founded on Peter and the Eleven, but in the day-to-day life of the Church it is the women who are constantly opening the door to the Lord and accompanying him to the Cross, and so it is they who come to experience the Risen One.”
However, we must not succumb to the romantic notion that God decided to create the universe with other persons in it because God was lonely. Rather, it is as though the three Persons say to one another: “Our community life is so good, why don’t we create other persons and invite them into this life?” God does not create out of need, but out of love. To give up God as “Father” is to surrender male privilege. To embrace the “feminine” in God is to embrace the promise of that deep nurturing presence and indwelling that we so need, the warmth that a mother’s caress can give. In the same book Pope Benedict speaks about the import of the feminine: “...in the narrative tradition (of the Resurrection) women play a key role, indeed they take precedence over the men.” “...they communicate the whole breadth of the Resurrection experience...the first encounter with the Risen Lord was destined to be for them (women).” (pp. 262-263).
God is personal, relatedness, dialogue, three persons flowing into each other and radiating out to the world. God, Father, Son and Spirit, is the perfect community, needing nothing else for completion. We must not succumb to the romantic notion that God decided to create the universe with other persons in it because God was lonely. Rather, it is as though the three Persons say to one another: “Our community life is so good, why don’t we create other persons and invite them into this life?” God does not create out of need, but out of love. To give up God as “Father” is to surrender male privilege. To embrace the “feminine” in God is to embrace the promise of that deep nurturing presence and indwelling that we so need, the warmth that a mother’s caress can give. In the same book Pope Benedict speaks about the import of the feminine: “...in the narrative tradition (of the Resurrection) women play a key role, indeed they take precedence over the men.” “...they communicate the whole breadth of the Resurrection experience...the first encounter with the Risen Lord was destined to be for them (women).” (pp. 262-263).
Yet God is neither male nor female. God is infinitely more than our sexual experience and awareness. At the same time, the divine reality embraces those genuine strengths that both sexes know - and that each sex knows in its own human fullness. So we crave for an experience of God as life-giving and nurturing from within. Sometimes feminist women have expressed the vision of God better than men have. Here is Beverly Harrison describing God as “the one present who sustains us, gently but firmly grounding the fragile possibilities of our action, one whose power of co-relation enhances and enriches our acts aimed at human fulfilment, mutuality and justice. In the web of life this lovely Holy One is enmeshed with us.”
Fr. Mervyn Carapiet
St. Thomas Church
Middleton Row
Kolkata
Yet God is neither male nor female. God is infinitely more than our sexual experience and awareness. At the same time, the divine reality embraces those genuine strengths that both sexes know - and that each sex knows in its own human fullness. So we crave for an experience of God as life-giving and nurturing from within. Sometimes feminist women have expressed the vision of God better than men have. Here is Beverly Harrison describing God as “the one present who sustains us, gently but firmly grounding the fragile possibilities of our action, one whose power of co-relation enhances and enriches our acts aimed at human fulfilment, mutuality and justice. In the web of life this lovely Holy One is enmeshed with us.”
Fr. Mervyn Carapiet
St. Thomas Church
Middleton Row
Kolkata
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